


More Distant and More Solemn

by girl_wonder



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyra and Tami keep moving when everything else stops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Distant and More Solemn

Title: More Distant and More Solemn  
Author: fryadvocate  
Fandom: Friday Night Lights  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairing: minor Matt/Julie and Eric/Tami  
Warnings: none  
Recipient:   
Request: _Request 1 - fandom: Friday Night Lights  
Details: Something quiet and desolate, with plenty of Tyra and Tami. And Coach. Other than that, anything goes._  
Summary: Tyra and Tami keep moving when everything else stops.

******

It was midnight and the sun hung over the western horizon, always setting, never falling below the edge of the sky.

Their neighborhood makeup changed like a tide, some people moving out as others moved closer to town. Ten miles away from the Baptist church was too far to walk for the daily town meetings, and no one wanted to walk out to see how people on the outskirts were surviving.

"Momma," Tyra said.

Her mother moved around in the kitchen, noisy. The organization in her movements made her searching seem methodical instead of desperate.

"I think we should move," Tyra said.

Her mother slammed the door to the refrigerator, a sound like a slap echoing in the kitchen. The fridge had stopped working about the same time as the television had, and Tyra had to drag an old cooler out of the garage for their food. Mindy had been helpful with that, separating out what they could use and what they couldn't.

"This is my house," her mother said. Tyra leaned over the counter, only able to see her mother's back as she crouched on the ground, obstinately searching through a bottom cabinet.

"It'd be safer," Tyra said.

The sound of glass shattering was sudden, but then her mother stood up, holding a bottle of whiskey in the soft light of the setting sun.

"What'd you break?" Tyra asked. She made a fist with one hand, nails digging into her palm. Even when things were this bad, if she yelled, her mother just got more stubborn.

"A glass, don't worry, I'll get it." When Tyra started to reach for a broom, her mother slapped away her hand. "I'll get it!"

Throwing up her hands, Tyra said, "Fine. _Fine_."

Tyra left her mother to the bottle and headed for the football field. The walk was longer than she expected, an hour or more of silence and light. The houses she passed were lit by candles, small light not much better than the sun itself. When she heard a dog slam up against a chain link fence, growling, she sheid towards the center of the road.

Even though it was midnight, she didn't see any bonfire yet on the field, just the movement of people at a distance, twilight making their movements look stuttered, like old movies played on a projector.

The team was mostly still there, partying. The dead speakers had been smashed to pieces with baseball bats, and everyone was stretched out, tired, when she got there.

"Hey, girl." Smash nodded at her, gestured with his beer to a cooler.

Gently, she freed the bottle from his hand instead, took a long swallow and handed it back with a smirk. He reached for her leg and she remembered almost sleeping with him once upon a time.

"Where's Tim?" she asked.

Smash gestured to the bleachers, the circle of faces lit by sunlight. She watched her feet instead of the crowd until she got up to where Tim was holding court. Matt and Julie sat next to him, slightly off center, with Landry beside them and Jason across.

Lyla looked away when Tyra caught her eye.

"Hi," Tyra said, firmly. She sat next to Julie, glanced over Landry's shoulder to see what he was reading.

Around her, the attention shifted back to Riggins and Jason, who were still talking about football, about Odessa's defense and Cedar Hill's offense. When the rally girls came by with more rounds, Tyra took the one that had been directed at Tim.

Tim rolled his eyes and laughed a little. Taking the last beer, he turned towards Landry. "What'cha reading?"

Landry didn't look up from his book, so Tyra nudged him, before Tim could start in.

"T.S. Eliot," Landry said, smiling at her.

There was silence around the circle, and Landry frowned a little, like he was once again struck by who he had been spending time with. "It says something about our educational system that none of you ever had to read him. Maybe if he'd written football plays, you'd remember his poems."

Tim took a swallow of beer. "He played football?"

"No." Landry opened his mouth a few times, before saying, carefully, "He was only one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century."

Tyra glanced over and caught Julie smiling, Matt ducking his head into her neck. When she looked back, Landry was watching her again, with a slightly slack-jawed grin, like sitting next to her was a wonderful gift someone'd gotten him for Christmas.

"Well," she said, expectantly.

Landry cleared his throat. "'Is it like this/ In death’s other kingdom/ Waking alone/ At the hour when we are/ Trembling with tenderness/ Lips that would kiss/ Form prayers to broken stone.'"

There was a pause after he spoke and the pages flickered in the wind. Two J.V. players started tossing around a football near the fifty yard line. The sound of skin catching the ball was familiar at a distance.

"That's fucking depressing, Landry," Tim said.

An awkward laugh broke the silence, and Tim got up, stretching his hands above his head and tossing down his varsity jacket. "I'm gonna go play. You coming, Saracen?"

"Well, I was, um," Saracen paused, looking between Tim and Julie until Julie rolled her eyes. "I guess I am."

He disentangled quickly and Tyra didn't watch them walk off. She knew what a man he'd grown into in the last season, what a man he'd grown into since the sun had stopped setting. He was still any old football player, though. Torn between the game and his girl.

"Let me see that," she said, opening her hand for Landry's book.

*****

Everyone knew that Mrs. Saracen was just going crazier since things had stopped, but no one had done anything, not even Buddy Garrity, who seemed to be trying to run the mayor out of the busybody business.

When Tyra swung by the strip joint to see if she could get Mindy to pick up some cigarettes, she almost wasn't surprised to see Mrs. Saracen wandering around in her nightgown, screaming about the devil.

Mindy and a couple of other girls were watching her from the doorway, passing a joint between them.

"How long has she been here?" Tyra asked.

"An hour or so." Mindy coughed and handed off the bud to Sophie, still in her work costume, glitter and sparkles lighting up in the sunset.

"Anyone go for Saracen?"

It was almost embarrassing to watch, and Tyra sighed, shrugging out of her jacket and placing it over Mrs. Saracen's shoulders.

"Mrs. Saracen?" she said. She tried speaking more firmly, the way she'd talk to her mother during a bender. "I'm Tyra. We went to State together."

By the time that they got to the Taylor house, it was nearly ten at night, and the sun hadn't moved at all. Mrs. Taylor was in the kitchen: Tyra could hear her when she knocked on the door.

It was still surprising to see Mrs. Taylor so pregnant. With one hand on the door and one on her stomach, she looked like any of the women in town who got married right after high school and then stayed at home until their third, fourth, fifth kid was grown.

"Oh my god," she said, when she saw Mrs. Saracen. "Oh, c'mere, honey."

Tyra knew that Mrs. Taylor wasn't like those women, and when she pulled them both inside, Tyra saw that the kitchen table was piled with papers. Handwritten notes from the city council meetings, from the school record before the computers had all stopped working.

"Matt and Julie are out looking for you," she said. "Thanks for bringing her."

Mrs. Taylor looked up at Tyra when she said that. Tyra shrugged.

"She was over by the strip club." Standing alone in the entryway while Mrs. Taylor struggled to help Mrs. Saracen onto the couch, Tyra felt as awkward as the first time she'd come to dinner at the Taylor household. "Any word from Mr. Taylor?"

Pulling a blanket up over Mrs. Saracen's chest, Mrs. Taylor said, "No. He was leaving Austin when his phone cut out."

There wasn't much to say to that, so Tyra picked up a mug from the dish rack and filled it from the bottle of water next to the sink.

She offered it to Mrs. Saracen, who took a drink, her hands shaking enough that Tyra had to keep it steady. "You're a good girl," Mrs. Saracen said.

Tyra took a seat at the counter and only then remembered to offer a hand out to Mrs. Taylor, to help her settle in a chair at the table. Mrs. Taylor waved it off, using the edge of the table to balance herself.

"Phones stopped before cars," Tyra said. It was the only thing she could think to say, because Tyra had been lucky enough to avoid needing the Planned Parenthood, but from what she did know, Mrs. Taylor looked ready to pop.

Mrs. Taylor raised both her eyebrows and gave Tyra the same look that she had whenever Tyra said she wasn't smart enough for something. The candle on the table gave off a warm glow, but Mrs. Taylor had all of the shades open, letting in as much light as the sun gave off.

"You keeping up with your schoolwork?"

"Are you kidding, Mrs. Taylor?" Tyra asked. The school was shut down, and even if it hadn't been, it was July, the first July that Tyra had ever lived through without a wave of unbearable heat and fans on all the time.

Mrs. Taylor looked as though she was serious and Tyra shook her head. Out of the open window, she could hear the neighbors yelling, harsh sounds and a door slamming.

"I've been reading," Tyra said, defensively. Landry's book was still in her purse, because she hadn't seen him since the party.

Tim was right, though, it _was_ fucking depressing.

*****

She read in the Taylors' backyard as they waited for Julie and Saracen to get home. Mrs. Taylor brought out lemonade, made too sweet from the mix.

There wasn't much else to do, and if Saracen took his grandma home with him, it would mean that she had company on her way home. The streets were silent without cars, but that didn't mean that there weren't people, just that no one could call 9-1-1 if someone tried wrapping an arm around her neck, tried saying, "Down on your knees or I'll slit your throat." Knives worked as well as they had before the world turned itself off.

Mrs. Taylor was inside, writing on notepads and opening a can of condensed soup that she could water down and feed to Mrs. Saracen. Tyra was surprised when Mrs. Taylor came outside with a bowl for her, the soggy noodles tasted better than the popcorn Tyra had cooked over a barbeque for breakfast.

*****

Tyra woke with her face pressed against the table, metal mesh imprinted on the back of her palm, the side of her arm. Her mouth tasted foul, and she spit a few times into the dying rosebushes. She tucked the book into the back of her jeans.

"'This is the dead land,'" she said, and felt like Landry, reading to people who didn't understand. "'This is cactus land.'"

The sky looked the same, half-light and she looked at her wrist watch only to see that it was ten o'clock, still. Holding her wrist up to her ear, she didn't hear any ticking, just silence.

She should have seen it coming; the radios had stopped working yesterday, but she thought that her watch, the used, ten-dollar Timex she'd picked up at the Salvation Army would last longer than that. She un-snapped it and hit it against the table twice, and the face cracked but the hands didn't start moving.

Picking up one of the garden rocks carved with the words _Every day is God's gift_ , Tyra slammed it down on the watch, and again on the broken jumble of mechanical pieces until she didn't want to be outside any more.

Mrs. Taylor was in an easy chair, tilted all the way back. Her eyes were shut and her eyeliner was smudged. She looked older than Tyra'd ever seen, almost as old as Mrs. Saracen.

On the couch, Mrs. Saracen was still, and Tyra was sure she was dead, her chest unmoving under the blanket.

Tyra sank down on the foot table, watching until she was sure that Mrs. Saracen was breathing, until Mrs. Saracen coughed with a whooping, sick sound. Pressing her forehead into her fist, Tyra exhaled and thought about Landry's stupid poem.

There was a firm knock on the door, and Tyra stood, paused a moment to look at Mrs. Taylor. She didn't live here, she wasn't one of them. It almost wasn't right for her to be answering the door.

Smash's mother was at the door, wide underneath her scrubs.

"Where's Tami?" Smash's mother looked tired, sweat dark under her arms. Over one shoulder, she carried a large handbag, her arm covering it securely.

"Asleep," Tyra said, blocking the door protectively. She'd heard that a lot of people liked Smash's mother, but Tyra couldn't forget the look of disdain in the woman's eyes.

Smash's mother frowned, her lips tightening as she looked Tyra up and down. Tyra put a hand on her hip, feeling the edge of her low slung jeans and tight t-shirt.

"I'm here to check on the baby."

From behind her, Tyra heard the easy chair snap closed and Mrs. Taylor ask, "Corrina?"

Smash's mother pushed past Tyra, her voice loud. "Right here. Don't get up, lay back. Let me see that stomach."

She made the house sound occupied in a way that Tyra couldn't. Pulling on her jacket, Tyra said, "I'm going to go look for Julie."

"Thank you, Tyra," Mrs. Taylor said, her voice barely audible under the reassuring noise of Smash's mother.

The street was cool, as cool as it always felt, and Tyra only had to walk about a mile towards Saracen's house before she heard Julie and Matt, their voices loud.

"Grandma?" Matt had his hands cupped around his mouth, like a kid playing games.

Julie saw her first, and waved, tired. "Hi."

"Hey," Matt said. "Have you seen my grandma?"

Tyra nodded, and jerked her head back towards the house. "She's at Julie's house."

Matt was running before she'd even finished speaking. Julie reached out and touched Tyra's arm. "Thanks."

Tyra looked towards her house, then back towards the Taylors' house. Her sister would have gone home by now, at least to look in on their mother, and Tyra still wanted company for the walk home.

She let herself back into the Taylor house, noisy with voices overlapping.

*****

At home, the quiet was too much, her mother snoring in the next room, her sister shifting against the creaking springs.

Tyra hadn't gone to church since she was baptized, and even Lyla Garrity coming to her house in a white dress, ready to spread the word of God, hadn't made her do anything more than gawk.

Still, she understood the desperation in Lyla's eyes, when she'd said, "Tyra, you have to."

Tyra didn't, and hadn't quite been able to throw Lyla out the way she might have a few months ago. She got it, though, she really did. Whenever things went bad, when the team was on a losing streak, when another plant closed, people always wanted to turn to God, ask him for reassurance.

"'For thine is the kingdom,'" she read, quietly. "'For Thine is/ Life is/ For Thine is the...'"

Tyra closed the book and put it on the table. "Crappy ending," she said.

*****

End  



End file.
